Power of Print Archives

Highlights of the start of 2024…..

The underpinning thread of the start of 2024 has been: –

What have we learnt from the last few years?
Equally what has it taught us?
How have we changed?

The pace of change is now monumental in society and expectations have never been greater on what people expect and when they expect it. We’ve watched our peers across the graphic arts industry and needless to say, failing to innovate and develop genuinely leads to a weakness in the marketplace. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve never put all our eggs in one basket, having a split of sheet-fed digital print, large format print and garments has meant we’ve been able to juggle the ebb and flow of customer business requirements. It has also allowed us to build a base where we can meet customers’ needs by being a reliable partner.

I will be the first to say, that this level of pace of change, has put pressure on all staff across HAD-Print. I am grateful for the commitment and support the extended team has delivered. The demands and the requirements to be commercial there are extremely challenging. However, this has meant we’ve been in the position to say yes more.

Admittedly some of these changes and developments detailed here started at the end of 2023 however really only came to being implemented properly in Q1 and Q2 of 2024.

Full replacement of our ageing pro-production digital press, which has significantly “beefed up” our performance benchmark. Our ageing Canon Imagepress 6011 was retired last year, leaving us with 2 Canon Imagepress C700’s and a C800. We were well aware of the challenges we faced with customer work that required something more robust.

The opportunity arose to bring in a Canon Imagepress c10000vp, which didn’t just support our need for more board stock compatibility but also the long sheet format. It has since wowed us with its near litho-like print quality and speed performance.

This addition to our studio really puts us in the capabilities of probably the punchiest digital print firepower in Calderdale.

Meeting the needs of customer expectations both timely and capacity issues, has meant further expansion with our garment print department. We’ve now brought embroidery in-house, giving us a cracking capacity for production with a multi-head machine. In our true form, we have “started at a relevant point for us on the ladder”, getting the balance between quality expectations and capacity has taken us on a deliberate path. The extreme learning has been highly significant over the last 2 months. This is very much an enabling opportunity for our garment printing provision, as it builds capacity, coupled with the DTF our garment print and embellishment offering has never been greater.

The tail end of 2023 saw us launch our subscription print service for regular business consumers of print. We now have several clients on this scheme and reaping the rewards of being on contract and having a schedule of dedicated print when they need it, at a competitive price point.

Trades’ “advantage club” launching soon, will have two tiers to the club, which will offer access to packages and promotions relevant to “trades” based businesses, when coupled with our subscription offering, we will future enhance the offering on the “advantage club”.

Supporting our offering to trades-based businesses we now have access to some new brands within our product ranges:-

Jobman – highly functional, well specified Scandi workwear – absolute top of the class.

Jobman Workwear – again a silent giant which is gaining ground in the UK. A sister brand to Craft Sportswear – which is renowned for its performance in running and cycling. Jobman believes Workwear should withstand the toughest conditions. Using strong, proven materials in their garment puts them under rigorous scrutiny at the point of specifying. This is matched through being a Scandinavian brand with high sustainable credentials.

Regatta Professional Navigate range presents excellent opportunities for stylish branded workwear.

Regatta Professional. A well-known name, which sits in a portfolio of well-established brands like Craghoppers – which is well-known in the outdoor industry. This pedigree of performance has moved on to Regatta Professional. Creating apparel which is well designed, well specified and has good price points. The interesting movement for 2024, is their Navigate range, which sees a two-colour tone option delivered into the selection which enables smart apparel to work with your branding.

Another new item for May 2024 is we are now on the authorised network for Joma Sportwear. Supporting our offering for Grassroots football and meeting some of the challenges or gaps presented by our existing wholesale partners, we now have a fuller offering for sports apparel.

Improvements made to our plan printing facilities; we’ve always had the capability for print printing bureau service. We have a number of tradespeople who use us for the service. We’ve just replaced our monochrome plan printer, so the capacity for speed and A0-sized drawings is back to where it has been previously.

New product range: short-run (50-250 quantity) presentation folders. Building on previous experiences and product knowledge our Castle Range of presentation folders, provides an easy access route to small quantity presentation folders. Pre-set-up templates, and standardised pricing, see the utilisation of the upgraded digital press mentioned earlier and better utilisation of our digital die cutter.

Talking of Digital Die Cutter – one job recently completed was The Kirkwood at-home collection boxes. Very apparent that the combination of digital print and digital finishing opened up this opportunity making it effective for them to use us. We have joined The Kirkwood Business Club which has a two-fold effect of supporting them, plus creating a vibrant business cohort to which we now belong.

Maintenance of “keen pricing” in a rising market…. We know this is challenging, not just for you but also for us. We endeavour at every point to keep things as keen as we can. Nothing goes without review, including large format items, where through better supply chain relationships we’ve brought in the same without incurring additional costs. Paper and board – we are again harnessing management of relationships with suppliers to purchase more effectively. We’ve shifted our habits in the last year to again build better relationships with one of our key garment wholesalers, where on larger projects we are getting more leverage to help maintain competitive pricing.

We still have the challenges of the power at what now seems an excessively high unit cost due to our supply being through our landlord. However, we are doing our best to mitigate this through upgrades to lighting within the print studio.

What’s on the horizon….

• Greater level of templates existing cutting formes for digital die cutting

• Opportunities for more embroidery within our garment offering. We have some blisteringly impressive work to be scheduled through our Direct To Film (DTF) transfers for t-shirts and hoodies

• Further building of our garment product offering to the outdoor education and leisure sectors

• Scope for a wider offering in selected sports apparel

• Addressing our product and pricing offering around book printing.

Whilst this is the highlight, much has been going on here at HAD-Print. We endeavour to innovate our offering for you, the big challenge, is if you don’t say or talk to us, we can’t exceed your expectations with our offering!

We know that we will always be innovating and changing. We have watched businesses we have respected disappear from the marketplace in the last few years, and I will say openly their challenges have been around innovating and supporting customers. I like to think we are pushing the boundaries and developing new exciting things within HAD-Print, which will hopefully keep us fresh. However, we always welcome conversation around pushing the boundaries and developing how we support you.

The big question… Why?

In an age where buzzwords and rhetoric spin around endlessly. Falsities around being kind to the environment by using electronic communications bluff their way into everyday life. Why does print or physical marketing matter?

We exist to provide the following

• enable successful businesses/organizations to engage with effective physical touchpoints
• assist SMEs / charities to deliver effective physical branding to enforce their presence in their primary customer touchpoints
• enable more accountable communications with known carbon footprint materials

What drives us… in a physical world, where being seen is a significant challenge. The reality of physical provides a great opportunity to help SMEs and third-sector organizations to create reality, and retention whilst resonating with an audience in a meaningful way.

The power of print, aka physical marketing, lies in the ability to connect. Connections are created through, the impact of the message; evoking the senses, visual and touch. Print through its lesser utilization due to mass market digital communications being cheap and overused, means print holds a unique power of trust, and reality, there at the moment, with no distractions. When coupled with creativity in a proper design, and well-written content, it has leverage in a very different way. Add in personalized or localized to make the message even more relevant to the recipient, and the engagement level increases further.

As a multi-disciplinary print provider, we don’t just print on paper, but everything through to large format items like banners and signage, through to garments and apparel. Delivering a wide range of physical items ready to take your brand. Delivery of this range of items, allows us to support our customers more fully in delivering their message, even just reminding people of who they are. Of course, this can be subliminal, working in the background.

We don’t live in silos, unlike some graphic communication providers. We know and understand the power of connecting digital communications with print. We don’t profess to be experts in digital communications, however, understand what you can do. Hence why you won’t find us selling websites, social media support or other digital products. At the heart of what we do is the power of physical media through print. We understand the paper, and the nuisances of print finishing, which allows us to better specify strong campaigns and items in print.

Don’t think we are not connected, we do understand marketing basics, we have professionals in other disciplines we love to work with. We will ask, what is your call to action? How do you want to measure or quantify parts of marketing tools? How are you distributing or connecting with people who might be your ideal audience? These aren’t hostile questions, purely us making sure you have thought through a customer journey, where are you wanting them to go next and why.

As for being accountable, we can identify sources of paper, substrates, garment stock and pretty much everything that flows through our print studio. From the shortest journeys of Kendal to Preston and us in Halifax, or paper manufactured in Portugal. With toner which is compostable, latex large format ink. We are well aware of every item we use in our processes. We’d like to challenge you to think of the carbon used in digital communications- you’ll struggle to fully identify every element or resource used.

Above all, we care about what we do, try to be properly responsible, and have some ethics along the way. Perhaps we are an exception to life in modern business society, we aim to be credible, through being responsible. We work best when in partnership with our customers, helping them to achieve whilst delivering progressive development for all involved. Making us part of the bigger community, valued and adding value where we can.

Targeted, direct and relevant.

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Almost sounds utopian but highly achievable. But yet small businesses still use scattergun approaches to marketing, in the hope of a big return.

What happens when you get something which isn’t relevant to you, you ignore it. If it’s impersonal it too gets ignored. So why the ignorance or your potential customers and customers? Are you just being lazy? Would you respond if someone shouted “Oi! You!” In the street – not likely.

The levels of message absorption in marketing materials are on a downward slide. Due to the high volumes of digital content, people just cannot remember it. Or it just doesn’t strike an accord with them. You want a meaningful customer journey; however, the use of selected channels doesn’t reap the return. Blasting out messages which just don’t get seen or heard seems to be a small given factor in some cases. Looking at our digital profiles, we get plenty of hits, however, the conversion to actual clients is nothing to write home about.

Business is about relationships. No one starts a meaning relationship digitally, how many online dating swipes, either way, dismissing without any validated reason. It’s about reputation, trust and referral. People like people like themselves, commonality, humanity is at the heart of all of us. So why do we try to start a meaningful relationship with so little engagement?

As printers, we haven’t forgotten the power of physicality in marketing. We do networking, we regularly call and chat with people (yes on the phone, not a chat-box), and we aim to inspire our audience with the physical presence print offers. We know we gain clients when it’s a proper relationship. (Proper might have something to do with us being based in Yorkshire) A large percentage of our work comes from referral, we wouldn’t have household names like The Scouts, Barnardos and other prominent charities in our portfolio, if it wasn’t for recommendation by people. How do we do it? Storytelling is the key, it’s the difference we make, the added value of our actions (which don’t necessarily appear as an item on a line on an invoice), how we do business which makes the difference.

This June, we did another release of our House Newsletter, which focused on direct mail and what it can do and offer, it went to a very selective list of people – so focussed, either existing customers of people we’d like to work with. It links with all our other marketing channels, so it builds our story. To be fair, it is an entry-level functional item of direct mail, personalised on every piece within it, so ticks the box of being direct and personal. We added a small twist, a little piece of Yorkshire, with some Yorkshire Values.

My next question is would you be hospitable to all of your customers? I think we all would say yes. So we only did a list of about 100 names, print and production costs came in around the price of a good cup of barista coffee for each piece. (Of course creative and artwork costs do vary, so depends how you view it.) For reference, I also did the number crunching on double the volume and it came in around 65-75% of the price of your barista coffee. All this including the postage, using Royal Mail Barcoded Mail solutions.

In the commissioning process, we dummied and tested different paper stocks for weight and performance. Included and tested different insertion items for weight and Royal Mail compliance. This ensured we remained in Letter, Band One for postage purposes, so controlling the budget.

If you need to be proper and stand out, demonstrate your values, show you’re real and trust-worthy, we can tailor direct mail solutions to fit. We can suggest ideas to get you remembered for the right reasons too. We are well aware that opportunities for face to face business development could be limited in the foreseeable future. Creating a memorable engagement will become paramount.